


The Other Side of the Mirror

by EterPaladin



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Fantasy, M/M, Magic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-28
Updated: 2019-03-28
Packaged: 2019-12-25 20:19:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18268667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EterPaladin/pseuds/EterPaladin
Summary: The collision of two worlds; what happens when a human and a sorcerer cross paths? and what is the reason for their encounter?Magic spells, shinning necklaces and mythical portals. None of that was part of Theo's daily life. And neither was he going to accept it in his life. However, when a baffling yet beguiling wizard showed up at his door telling him his life was at risk, Theo had a feeling that whatever he decided to do next, not only it would define his future, but also change his life forever.





	1. Introduction

Theo could have sworn he wasn't alone in his apartment that night. There hadn't been no struggling noise neither coming from the front door nor the window, which he had already checked it was shuttered closed before heading to bed. Maybe he has forgotten to lock the door again. Or maybe not.

Whichever the reason was, that didn't change that someone had trespassed on his flat. Far in the distance, almost non-existent, he could hear the hackly sound of furniture being dragged and the rustling of papers. Yet, there was nothing he could do. He was very indeed paralyzed. And it was not as a result of him being plainly and utterly terrified. In fact, in that case the situation would have been a thousand times better than the hell he was going through. It was beyond him. Theo thought he must have been overly exhausted, since he wasn't even able to move a single finger. He had no other choice rather than laying down there until the racket coming from the living room stopped. And when it did, an excruciating quietude reigned over the whole place.

After a few seconds of silence had passed, he managed to hear the crackling sound of the floorboards moving closer to where he was and suddenly ending in front of his bedroom's door. His heart was so close from bursting out of his chest that he could feel the pounding sensation all over his body. He was hopelessly restrained in his bed. No matter how much he tried to get up or even scream for help, he was unable to bring himself to do any of those things. It was useless. He was stuck under those covers, hidden from whoever was behind his bedroom's door. Theo could only wait for the moment they decided to burst it open and do whatever they've gone there for. Hopefully for Theo, the door remained closed. The only sound that kept him from falling deeply into sleep was the gruff and heavy breathing sound that could be heard through the door.

Before he knew it, a waiting game had started. Was that person a thief? A kidnapper? He couldn't figure it out. Perhaps they were his brother's acquaintance. Yet there was no way of knowing it since he had never been introduced to any of his friends. If he had any friends. Theo's brother had always been reluctant to tell him about his life. About his nocturnal getaways. He even kept to himself all the memories he had of his parents. Their parents. The ones that Theo wasn't able to meet. Now, he won't ever have the chance to ask him about that. Not since he run away, only leaving behind a note saying he would be back. Theo very much wanted to believe it. But it has been weeks since he last saw him. And his hope of seeing him again grow slimmer every day.

Many hours went by and although he had put a lot of effort in staying awake during the night, his senses began to give in gradually, till he completely lost all consciousness.

It was already past morning when he finally woke up, only to see in a daze how his bedroom door had been opened wide.


	2. Chapter 2

The apartment was a mess. The boxes for the move occupied most of the available space, some were open with clothes on the inside and others scattered on the floor. The bed, however, being the place where Theo slept, was ridiculously flawless. Though he couldn't say the same about his surroundings. On the night table and under several pieces of clothing, was meticulously placed the pendant necklace that belonged to his mother. Although he was too young to remember her, Theo clung to that piece as constant proof of its existence.  
A slight breeze slid out of the window, moving the curtains and the almost transparent blue of the jewel, it became even more translucent as the faint rays of sunshine timidly infiltrated through it.  
The successive noise of the keys against the lock indicated the arrival of the owner of that chaotic place. The heavy door of the old apartment, as it opened, dragged with it the clothes that lay on the floor next to it. Dodging these garments with a certain clumsiness, Theo made his way to the kitchen, where the disorder seemed to give way. Leaving the supermarket bags on the counter, he set out to quickly put everything he had bought into the small temporary refrigerator. Suddenly, the cell phone in his pocket began to vibrate and Theo went on to disorderly push the food into the refrigerator in an attempt to hurry. He turned off the programmed alarm and began getting dressed as quickly as he could to get to work, not forgetting, of course, to bring his pendant.  
When he arrived at the Café, he snuck in through the back door, hoping to avoid meeting his manager, who would murder him if he caught him coming to work late. Cautiously, he slipped into the locker room leaving his backpack in the locker room and left with the same speed, while tying his apron. As soon as he approached the counter, his coworker looked at him without an ounce of surprise in his gaze and, pointing backwards with his thumb, said to him:  
-The manager wants to talk to you when you finish your shift - and continued to take the order from the client in front of him as if nothing has happened. That phrase haunted him all afternoon; torturing himself while he waited for the inevitable. He could not afford losing him job once more, he had not yet paid the rent for the apartment. He would be in a huge problem.  
With the bitter aroma of coffee in the air, Theo spent the entire afternoon preparing drinks while Noah, his co-worker, had chosen that day to retire earlier and leave him alone to face the manager's fury. The tables of the place were crowded, however, the bustle of the crowd helped him distract himself as he took orders. By 9 PM, Theo couldn't stop drumming his fingers on the table; now he was a bundle of nerves, to the point that he couldn't sit still behind the cash register. At that time, there were rarely any clients, and that's the reason why he jumped in his seat when he heard the sound of the wind chimes as the front door opened. A man with a long, dark coat entered and headed straight for the counter. Theo could not help but tremble as his gaze settled on him, a singular, but strangely familiar sensation made him quiver slightly.  
“An Espresso please” he said in a voice that seemed a little demanding to Theo. Then he walked away to a table to wait for his coffee. Theo assumed he should have been in a hurry, from the way he impatiently glanced at the watch on his wrist. Theo rushed to finish his order and took it to his table. The man, who was staring at the door of the Café with an immutable expression, turned his gaze towards him and murmured a "thank you" and looked back concentrated at the entrance. As he walked away to the counter, Theo gave a quick glance at the door, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary to him; nothing more than people walking in front of the windows of the shop. About fifteen minutes passed and the Espresso, now supposed to be cold, was still intact on the table. The client's suspicious attitude did not help with the creeping nervous attack Theo was suffering at the time. The gentleman, who looked as if he was going to make a hole with his eyes in the gate from looking at it so much, glanced, for so it seemed the tenth time, at his watch and then at him, opening his eyes slightly with an expression of surprise, as if he had forgotten that he was in the room. The man, while Theo mas trying to make up some moderately credible excuse to give to the manager, stood up abruptly and prepared to leave the place, without even having touched the coffee. However, half a metre from the door, he turned and scanned him with his staring eyes. Hesitantly, he walked to where Baekhyun was and slipped to him his credit card.  
“You didn't charge me for the coffee," he said sighing, exhausted.  
"To be honest, if I were the manager, I'd also fire me” thought Theo as he swiped the card through the dataphone. As he did so, he felt the man's gaze watching him silently; he had never so much wished to be somewhere else as at that moment. His anxiety was rising resoundingly. Those seconds went by so slowly, they felt like years. When he returned the card and his hands rubbed together, an electrifying shiver similar to the previous one ran down the entire length of his spine. The gentleman was now looking into his eyes unabashedly, quickly grabbed Theo by the arm and squeezed him firmly.  
“It's you” he said stunned, his gaze fluctuating between Theo's face and his chest. “I can't believe it.”  
The boy, on the verge of a nervous attack, tried to escape the grip, but the man refused to let him go. He was about to start screaming when he noticed a faint flash coming from his neck. Slowly and cautiously he turned his gaze to where the man had posed his, and astonished, he froze. His mother's pendant was emanating a gleaming blue light that he had never seen before. Now it was not only the man the absorbed one, Theo, who couldn't get over his shock, almost staggered backwards if it hadn't been for the solid grip of the strange individual. When the man let go of his arm, the light from the pendant began to extinguish to the state it was in before. Theo lifted his head back at the man to find him staring at him fulminantly, waiting for some movement on his part.  
“I've been waiting for you" said the grim subject, with a serious countenance, clinging to Theo’s shoulder and squeezing it even tighter as he watched the blue flame sprout from the necklace once again.


	3. Chapter 3

He didn't even have time to assimilate the situation. With one stroke, he withdrew the hand of the man who had rested on his shoulder. This one, for his part, didn't seem to like his attitude. Theo began to retreat slowly.  
“I don't think that's a good idea,” said the man roughly. He raised his hand and made an inverted U-shaped movement without even taking his defiant gaze away from him. Theo did not hesitate to run to his manager's office. However, he could not even take two steps when he felt himself being brutally pushed against the wall. As strange as it seemed, Theo recognized that feeling. It was the same one he had experienced the night before, when someone had broken into his house. He didn't know how to react. "I knew I hadn't imagined it," Theo thought as he watched with a mixture of feelings as the man slowly approached him. Covering his mouth, he walked towards him with a limp that Theo had not perceived before. Pointlessly, he tried to escape from that magnetic grip, or whatever, that held him against the wall, but the only thing he could do was to exhaust himself even more than he already was.  
Standing in front of him, the man lifted his head and removed his hand, now red with blood, from his mouth. Theo held his breath when he saw his face. Or rather, his eyes. The iris had changed to a dark reddish and fluorescent color. He had to avoid his gaze.

“I think you've got the wrong person,” Theo said in a trembling, barely audible voice, “I don't even know you” 

The man coughed again and Theo could feel the force immobilizing him against the wall weakening.

“I'm pretty sure it's you,” the subject replied with an extremely malicious smile as he raised his arm towards him with an open hand, “we could have done it differently, but you left me no choice.”

His necklace began to float, being drawn to the man as the light emerged from him once again. The brightness of the subject's eyes also increased in intensity. “He couldn't give the necklace to that stranger,” Theo said to himself, “it was all he had left of his mother.” He had to do something. Once he ripped it out of his neck, it was obvious he couldn't take it back. Of course, that would beif the man let him live, which the possibility was scarce, not to say non-existent. His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a closing door.

“Fuck,” mumbled Theo. He'd completely forgotten about the manager. Looking sidelong at the man, he realized that he was not the only one who had noticed it. In alert mode, the intimidating individual turned his gaze toward the hallway leading to the dressing rooms. "Now," thought Theo and, taking advantage of the moment of distraction, grasped tightly the necklace that was about to be torn from his neck. Little could he prevent what happened next. As soon as he picked up the pendant in the air, a kind of explosion of energy from the pendant itself was detonated, thereby expelling everything around him, including the man. A blinding light began to overflow from the crystal and yet, Theo, refused to let go. The energy that flowed, on the other hand, seemed to repel him. However, it was not in his options to let it go. He needed to stop whatever was going on. What he didn't know was how. He'd better find out soon enough. Theo, as an almost desperate measure in the face of that unusual situation, squeezed tightly into his hands the necklace trying to stop the flare of light, and the glow that had grown disproportionately faded away, being absorbed by the necklace itself. Almost immediately, the light bulbs that illuminated that part of the Café exploded in unison. The place was darkened and he could hardly distinguish the figure of the man in the blackness of the night. What he could see was the pair of bright red eyes fixed on him, barely blinking.  
“Theo?!” he heard the worried voice of the manager and then the accelerated steps to where he was. He felt a sting in his stomach when he realized that the man could attack him as soon as he entered the room. The truth is that, at that time, what the stranger could do was unpredictable. “Wait!” the footsteps didn't seem to stop, “Don't come here!”

At the end of the corridor he saw the silhouette of the manager walking hastily towards him despite his warnings. All the tension he had accumulated up to that point was about to explode. Kneeling on the floor, he watched in distress as Mr. Kim approached and turned on the flashlight on his cell phone to focus it on him. The light blinded him for a few seconds before the manager moved it away from him to illuminate his surroundings. As soon as he did that, Theo turned his head obfuscely to where the subject was. At least where he used to be, because the only thing he found was the rest of the glass from the bulbs that had recently exploded. There was no sign of the stranger.  
The lantern light also examined the chairs and tables that had been moved from their place because of the burst of energy.  
“Are you all right?” the light landed on him again. Theo didn't know how he was going to explain what just happened. Even he who had lived it could not understand it.  
“I'm fine, it's just that the light bulbs exploded,” Theo said, rising extremely slowly. He was trying to absorb what had happened. “I was arranging the tables so that I could close the shop,” he said as an answer for the skeptical look of the manager as he outlined one of his best smiles trying to disguise how altered he really was.  
“Okay,” said Mr. Kim, dodging the broken glass on the floor until he reached the door of the Café to lock it. “Finish cleaning and go home. We'll talk about this tomorrow,” the severity of his tone of voice reminded him of why he had been in a state of anxiety all afternoon. The disappointments just kept piling up. He quickly put the necklace in his pocket and rushed to tidy up the room. He could still feel the trace of the heat the necklace had emitted when he grabbed it.

 

 

As he finished securing the door of his apartment, he went to each room and turned on all the lights, not before verifying that there were no infiltrators in his home. He closed the window shutters and, a little calmer, collapsed on the couch. The brightness of the place gave him an unjustifiable security. But not enough. After everything that had just happened, he wasn't sure of anything anymore. His whole belief system and his conception of reality and the world as he knew it fell apart as he analyzed it further. No matter how much he reasoned it, he didn't quite understand. Should he call the police? He doubted they could do something about it, if they didn't put him in a madhouse first. Should he tell anyone? Mr. Kim not only would he fire him, but also he wouldn't believe him. Theo was sure he'd think they were nothing but excuses for the mediocre performance at work. However, he didn't have anyone else to tell. He hadn't made any friends in college yet and, to make matters worse, he was in a new city.  
He slid onto the sofa until he was absolutely lying down with his head facing up. He took the pendant out of his pocket and admired it against the light. In his eyes, it was a simple necklace. But deep down and after going through that situation, he knew it wasn't like that. It was evident that the man he had met that night was willing to do anything to get it. What was it really?, magic? He didn't even believe what he was thinking anymore. Even so, he couldn't think of another option.  
Suddenly, there was a knock on the door. He quickly stood up and put the necklace back in his pocket. Tense in his place, he did not move an inch and silently waited for that person to leave. He was barely breathing so as not to make a sound. And when he thought they were gone, they knocked on the door again insistently and louder than the previous time. What if it was the guy from the Café? What if he had followed him home? What would he do if he knocked the door down? Saying he was scared was a small thing. The rumbling palpitations of his heart ran from his chest to his throat, and his legs trembled so much that he did not know how he was still standing. He took the first wide book he saw between the boxes and held it as a bat as he approached the door. He knew it wasn't enough to defend himself, but at least it would give him time to run away. He tried to look at the peephole, waiting for a third knock that never came. He could only hear the "click" of the latch giving way and watch as the door opened little by little. He didn't hesitate a second. As soon as he spotted the figure entering his apartment, he pointed his book at his head in order to knock him out. The man grabbed the volume skillfully before it even touched him and closed the door in the process. Theo released the book in order to escape the stranger's grip. He leapt back in search of another object that might be useful to him as a weapon as he glanced at the man in front of him. It wasn't the same as the one in the cafeteria. That's what he was sure of. He found nothing around him to use so he had no choice but to stare at him in expectation of his next move. He looked younger, and he was actually much taller than him. That was the only thing that gave him an intimidating look, because as for his face, he didn't seem to emit murderous vibes. Or so he’d hoped. In fact, from the grimace on his face, he seemed entertained by his reaction.

“What were you going to do?" said the boy, holding his smile and tidying his leather jacket, “Hit me with the weight of knowledge?”  
“Who are you?” Theo tried to sound as strict as he could, despite the situation he was in, “You're with that gentleman, aren't you? The one with the long coat.”  
The expression on his face first became one of confusion and then one of complete seriousness. His aura changed completely.  
“Has he been around here?” said the boy with a severe dye in his voice, “Again?”  
“Why should I answer you?” Theo stuttered, “And what do you mean by aga-”. He couldn't finish the question. The boy had approached him to grab his forearm threateningly.  
“I asked you a question,” Theo could feel the boy's breath, by how close he was.  
“He intercepted me at work,” Theo said, giving in to the intense look the boy was giving him, “that was the only time.”  
“Then you must still have it, don't you?” he said as he let go of his arm without taking his eyes off him, “I mean the necklace.”  
“So what if I do?” Theo said in an attempt to recompose his posture, “What are you gonna do about it, kill me?”  
He didn't even know where those challenging words came from, clearly, he wasn't thinking. The boy squinted at him and took a step forward. All the bravery he had gathered seconds ago just vanished. A distant but thunderous blow stopped that scene. Alarmed, the boy moved away from him and began to turn off all the lights Theo had recently turned on.  
“They're here,” said the boy, grabbing him by the wrist and dragging him to the bathroom. “We have to go, now.”  
“Wait, what's going on?" said Theo bewildered. The commotion was more audibly. The young man opened the faucet of the bathtub and while it was filling he began to recite something in another language.  
“The fuck are you doing?” Theo wasn't planning to go on with this madness. He stretched out his arm to grab the doorknob so he could get out of there but was prevented by an outsider's hand.  
“Are you trying to get yourself killed?!” the boy whispered furiously. “Stay still and be quiet.”  
Suddenly, they heard a whack in the door of his apartment. Several voices followed.  
“Search for him! He's got to be here!” heard Theo amid all the bustle. He turned his head anxiously toward the boy and he looked back at him with a frown. His gaze oscillated between him and the bathtub, which continued to fill.  
“This will have to be enough. Hold on tight," said the boy, taking him by the waist as he threw themselves into the half-full bathtub. The last thing he could remember was how the young man's eyes turned red before diving into the icy water. The same color he’d seen in the man's eyes that night at the cafe. That memory prevailed in his mind as he plunged deeper and deeper into those bottomless waters.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
